A report on Monday says that RIM’s PlayBook tablet release was delayed because Apple bought all available touch screen displays.

[ad#Google Adsense 300x250 in story]RIM had apparently planned to release the PlayBook sometime in mid-March, but because Apple had already booked all the touch panels, the company had to postpone the launch, according to DigiTimes.

With things back on track, RIM will now ship the PlayBook on April 19. The PlayBook with Wi-Fi comes in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB varieties, priced at $499, $599, and $699 respectively — the same price as Apple’s iPad 2.

It is important to note, however, that the PlayBook only has a 7-inch display compared to the iPad’s 10-inch display.

Maybe Apple is using up all of various display factories capacity for 3.5 & 9.7″ display orders, so they could manufacture for RIM no matter what the size — but you need to change the article to clarify the point.

http://mangochut.net/ mangochutney

Awww, poor RIM, evil Apple bought all the screens and you couldn’t get any. How sad.

This is an odd report by DigiTimes. As you noted Jim, the playBook sports a 7″ screen, so Apple must’ve bought all the production capacity, not all the screens.

Anyway, that’s just poor planning on RIM’s side. It’s what you get for having three COOs.

http://twitter.com/Moeskido Moeskido

I’m wondering if that explains the rise in stock price of companies like Universal Display.

Anonymous

or, more likely Apple actually has nothing to do with it. And the delay is because there was a major earthquake which very likely shut down several factories, cut off power etc. And THAT is the cause of the delays.

Vamsmack

This could possibly be true due to the manufacturing process so the size has nothing to do with it.

However this seems like a convenient excuse to just chalk up another delay.

Anonymous

The whole truth is that Apple sent in spies to infiltrate RIM’s R&D to kill the project a year ago.